Tag Archives: Talam

a work of formal realism (which I neither condemn nor condone) usually adheres to a particular formula: Exposition informs a person’s Psychology, from which arises their Character, out of which certain Motives emerge, based upon which the character takes Action, from which Plot results (EPiC MAP).
– Bonnie Nazdam on the Limits of Cinematic Storytelling

டி எம் கிருஷ்ணா

Beyond the little world of art that Carnatic music occupies, what have we, the participants of this mega festival, done for the music? How much effort during the season have we made to bring diverse listeners into the art, take this art to other sections of society?

The Carnatic music in Chennai has become more about the season than about music and this is dangerous for the art. What we see happening in the season is only a symptom of a deeper lack of introspection on the art, its form, access and its integrity.

For the first song, the location was a rock in the middle of a waterbody. I went and sat there and said, ‘Give me five minutes’. I just had the tanpura with me. I hummed a few notes and started singing the song that came to my mind. That’s it. Every song in the film was taken in a single take. I didn’t sing twice and there were no retakes to correct any mistakes because that is also part of the idea. What you heard is actually what I sang there. In the movie, you will see me singing a phrase, and then correcting the phrase also. You actually see the artist going through the process of creativity as it is happening within him.

He loves to, time and again, touch on his core mission of upholding the authentic grammar of the musical form which has “evolved” enough to cause confusion (starting from the spelling: Karnatak, Carnatic, Karnatik?). There is only a fine line dividing the purist from the puritan, and the singer dangerously flirts on the edge. Witness, for instance, questions being raised on the aesthetic value of Raga Dharmavati, much appreciated by many for its melodic soulfulness but described here as “synthetic”.

You are described as a singer who stays clear of gimmicks . Would you label yourself as a purist?

Call it purist or whatever but the fact is I am a staunch believer in tradition. Tradition is dynamic, not static. Being purist doesn’t mean you don’t check out other ragas or stifle creativity. Tradition draws a boundary and gives you full freedom to do whatever you want within that framework. Often it is said the artiste gives the audience what it wants. On the contrary you have to decide what to give and so you set the benchmark for yourself.

Unlike the world of rock and roll where White musicians from Europe embraced the blues of the Blacks to make it widely acceptable, Tamil Nadu’s musical giants like Illaiyaraja or AR Rahman have reached out and collaborated with Carnatic musicians. They have used classical ragas for melodic compositions, percussion and vintage musical instruments in their film songs. From Carnatic giants like Balamurali Krishna to today’s Sudha Raghunathan or a Bombay Jayashree, Grammy winner Vikku Vinayakaram or a Guitar Prasanna the collaborations between Carnatic musicians and composers for films has only produced wondrous music from the state.

Carnatic vocalist TM Krishna, 39, on his decision to stay away from Chennai’s kutcheri circuit from this season, his rejection of the conservative tradition and why not all forms of music will accrue a huge following

Among Nehru’s ‘prejudices’ were ”maharajas, Portugal, moneylenders, certain American ways, Hinduism, the whites in Africa…” The list explains why Nehru was so offensive at the opening of the Ramakrishna Mission Institute in Calcutta, 1961.

There he spoke of ”bogus spirituality”, the absurdity of ”running away from the daily problems of life in the spirituality” — the profundities of undergrad radicalism — and then stalked off. ….Nehru, it was said, ”could be emphatic on a basis of insufficient knowledge”.…..he probably believed that the India of ”cow worshippers and devotees of Ayurvedic medicine and astrology” should be banished from public life……

TMK’s views about the audience, I have seen his indifference and at times down right insulting remarks to the audience–about 2/3 years back during the December season in MA, towards the tail end of the concert he was singing a ragamalika and one of the ragas was not too familiar to one member of the audience who got up to ask what the raga was to which TMK asked apparently in jest(in his opinion)–“You want to know this raga only — So that means you could identify the previous ragas”–he may not have intended to “show” the rasika up but the rasika definitely felt humiliated.

I do not want to take away his talent and concerts-popularity but in my opinion he could be more respectful if not deferential towards the audience.

பிறர் பேட்டிகள், கட்டுரைகள்

you are a larger-than-life musician is evident from your literary and writing skills; your book “A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story” was launched amidst much fanfare by no less a personality than Nobel laureate Amartya Sen! The DVD release with Bombay Jayashri earlier was a unique exercise. You dared to take Carnatic music across to Sri Lanka when things were not too comfortable with the neighbouring country.

As an adult, he graduated in economics and set tongues wagging when at 21 he married fellow musician Sangeetha Sivakumar, who is five years older. The desire to push boundaries had set in early at the Krishnamurti Foundation India school, an alternative school so wellknown that for generations it has been known as The School. Krishna’s two daughters go there now.

Krishna is constantly in search of a new project: Svanubhava, a music festival for students he founded with Bombay Jayashri and that he will helm on his own this year onwards; Sampradaya, an organisation that archives south India’s musical traditions and Kalachara Marumalarchi that attempts to revive the temple traditions in Tamil Nadu villages, recreating them as cultural hubs. His baby at the moment is Shabda (the equivalent of TED for Carnatic music) for which he has partnered with musicians RK Shriramkumar and HK Venkatram. – Saayujya the merging

Two years ago at a thematic concert, Krishna requested the organisers not to reveal the theme to the audience. “I sang a love song from the Sangam era, a Kannada poem on winter, a Rabindra Sangeet and Chinnanjiru kiliye (a Tamil song about a mother’s love for a child). At the end, some guessed the theme was rain; others said Rama. The answer was bhakti. That, to me, is surrender,” he says

I am sold to his divine music. We graduated from the same institution, the Vivekananda College in Chennai (Krishna pursued Economics and I majored in Physics). An added problem is that we are ethnically linked; both are TamBrams, that too from the same clannish Iyengar community.

He came down heavily on iconic music composer Ilayaraja for using a popular Carnatic music composition with changes in a film. “I don’t have an issue with Carnatic music being used in films, but I don’t like it being called Carnatic because that is not the purpose of that music in the film. If a raga is used for a visual, that is a theatrical expression. Use it the way you want, but don’t call it Carnatic,” he says.

But he sees no dichotomy in his own attempts at “deconstructing” the traditional kutcheri format that Carnatic music lovers hold so dear.

Tank I wondered if you could say a few words about Carnatic music and what it means for you.T.M. Krishna Carnatic music is among the two art-music forms. I use the term art music instead of classical – because I find the word “classical” quite delusional, an unaesthetic way of describing music. So whether it’s Western or whether it’s from India, I prefer to not use classical, but instead I use art music. The two art-music forms are Hindustani music and Carnatic music

The music is based on three elements. The first is the melodic element, the idea of the raga, which to put it very simply is an abstract, melodic identity that has structured itself through generations of connectivity and some amount of habituation, as well as emotional and intellectual construction. That develops through a continuous process of listening, singing, both by the audience and by the musicians. The second element is tala and laya, which is the rhythmic part. Laya is the sense of time and has two elements – like time itself – which is interval and event. The relationship between interval and event and that which lies in-between, is laya. When you construct that relationship into a certain number of beats, say eight counts or ten counts, then you have fixed laya into a framework. This is tala. The third element is text, both linguistic and non-linguistic. Carnatic music is formed of this triangular relationship between text, tala and raga. And depending on how you play with these three elements, the components of these elements, their interactivity, the passages of give and take, as well as the way the musicians allow them to talk to each other, the music unfolds. This is the body and the experience of Carnatic music.

Have Bombay Jayashri and you performed together before?T.M.K.:Certainly not for a full-fledged kutcheri. How we first sang together is an interesting story. Jayashri and I were collaborating on a coffee-table book on Carnatic music. We approached the then President of India, Abdul Kalam Azad for the unveiling. He agreed, on the condition that we sing together. It was then that we realized that we hadn’t ever sung together before! So we performed together for an invited audience at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. (The book is called Voices Within, published by Matrka, founded by TM Krishna and Bombay Jayashri, “to create a new platform to present Carnatic music.”)

தொடூர் மதுபூசி கிருஷ்ணாவின் எழுத்துகள்

Mr. Prime Minister, unlike your immediate predecessor you are not a mute spectator, you love to address and impress. We have heard you from Lal Qila, Madison Square garden, Dubai and Silicon Valley, at the home of Google and Facebook. We have seen you being moved by the memory of the hardships faced by your mother. Words, strong and emotional words come to you easily.

Here there is an acknowledgment of the hatred and violence that tore through communities, but Jinnah wants bygones to be bygones. He is unwilling to dwell on the past and dirty himself in its pot holes. He wants people to forgive, forget and move ahead to create a future. Radhakrishnan will of course have nothing of this

Radhakrishnan’s atonement is Gandhiesque, a self-purification, cleansing where the future course of action must be a prayaschita of the past.

Another invented truism being spread around is that the education system has made people anti-Hindu and pro-religious minorities. Even more laughable is the assertion that leftist academicians with the connivance of western socialist scholars have wiped out Hindu goodness and achievements from our history. If we were to visit the innumerable religious studies, art and language departments around this country, we will find more PhDs that are seeped in Hindu religiosity than of the other kind. But from what the naysayers claim, India by now should have become a mini-Soviet Union, but we are not

Sumanasa Foundation, mentioned in the citation, helps music students from rural places and bring music to special children as part of their therapy. Laudable causes indeed.

I do not feel it is wrong for a performer to experiment like he does on stage and agree not every experimentation would be to the liking of everyone. But it is his freedom to do so and I do not think the art would suffer from it.

I have been to some of the concerts he has taken to fishermen villages and I have seen the attendees happy not because they are able to appreciate the art but because they felt included.

Krishna has tried to explain why he is breaking the mould. The kutcheri format, as it exists today, is less than 100 years old, he correctly says. It was formalized in the 1920s by Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar to follow a standardized format. First, a brisk varnam; then an invocation on Lord Ganesha; then a few fast-paced krithis or songs without the improvisation; then a heavy piece in a “ghana” ragam or weighty ragam like Kambodhi, Kalyani, or Bhairavi. Then the centrepiece of the concert or the RTP—Ragam, Thanam, Pallavi, which is raga improvisation followed by swara-play, followed by the song in a ragamalika or garland of ragas; then the virtuoso, thani avarthanam, display by the accompanying drummers; then the lighter fare called thukkada, which includes bhajans, abhangs, padhams, javalis and the like.

“She the wavy ocean of nectar, She, the innermost being in the inner heart…” (sudhA tarangiNi, antarangiNi).. the lines that T.M. Krishna so beautifully rendered in ‘neraval’ perhaps describe the overall musical experience of the wonderful concert last evening. ‘mAye tvam yAhi’, this Kriti of Dikshithar with its overall mystical, meditative import, set to the enigmatic Raga Tarangini, was presented by TMK with the full depth and feel that it deserved.

Breaking of convention and interesting novelties have become so much the ‘norm’ in TMK’s performances that people come with such an expectation.. and they almost never go back with disappointment. The earnest Rasika always enjoys the music, irrespective of the ‘rebel’ elements (or the lack of them). Last night was no exception.

He sang ‘kanaka shaila vihArini (punnAga varAli) as the opening piece, in a relaxed pace. That was followed up with a Yamuna Kalyani Alapana and ‘krishna nee begane baro’ in *violin* for about 30+ minutes by Sriram Kumar ! The audience really got cheered up with this splendid violin treat, totally unexpected, it appeared. Then TMK sang a nice thAnam and the javali ‘adi neepai marulu konnadhi’ in the same Raga, (thankfully :))

A glorious Kedara Gowla Alapana, followed by “Thulasi Bilava” of Thyagaraja followed. The neraval around “uramuna mukhamuna shiramuna bhujamuna – karamuna nEtramuna caraNa yugambuna” was wholesome, as if one can feel the Raga Devata’s full presence from head to toe, with every one of Raga’s limbs shining. For Kalpana Swaram landings, he chose the phrase ‘paramAnandamutO’ in the next line in the lyrics – great aesthetic sense. The Thani Avartanam by Manoj Siva (Mridangam) and Anirudh Athreya (Khanjira) added luster to the piece.

Bharathiyar composition suTTum vizhi chuDar thAn came in a vibrant Ragamalika (Bilahari, Bhairavi, Sama, Vasantha) expressing emotions of joy, throbbing and longing in line with the highly romantic lyrics.

There was never ever a single dull moment in the entire concert. TM Krishna is undoubtedly an exemplary Artist whose music is engaging and absorbing and leaves you spellbound, literally. As a Rasika, these are really my feelings, though I find his writings an opinions on sociopolitical matters totally shallow, misinformed and at times even crooked.

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